Reconsider implementing bounty hunter badges

Question

Over 11 years ago, there was a prior feature request for "bounty hunter" badges, which was received with much acclaim (170+ votes). The request was declined, however. I want to put forward a case for considering this issue again.

Bounties were literally what got me to start contributing to SE in the first place: I had a question that went unanswered, and a desire to put a bounty on it was my first motivation to answer questions so that I could get enough rep to fund the bounty. In this way, bounties are in some sense the only thing that gives value to rep. It thus is in the interest of the entire SE community to provide strong encouragement for users to answer bounties, as this enhances the value of all SE contributions. We want to make posting bounties a worthwhile investment, and for that we need to make sure that we are encouraging good answers to bounties.

Currently, for the sites on which I am active, I don't feel like answering bounties is the best investment of time for most users. My answers to bountied questions rarely get more than 3 upvotes, which I guess is a reflection of how many users are scrolling through the bounty page (not many). Compared to answering new questions or hot questions, this is not the best way to earn rep, even if you do get the bounty. This is even more true when one only gets the auto-awarded bounty (from when the person offering the bounty forgets about it), which is typically only a paltry 25 rep. I think it is totally reasonable to provide an extra incentive for pursuing bounties. It would not be excessive.

A final reason why I think bounty hunter badges would be a good idea is that bountied questions are themselves often more subtle or difficult than normal questions. The typical bountied question (at least for the sites I am active on) is a good question which has received no answers either because it is difficult or because it is highly specialized. I personally love these sorts of questions, but I don't feel like the reward is proportional to the amount of effort required. Answering these sorts of questions is an art, and I feel like it deserves recognition in the same way that tag badges recognize expertise in subject area.

Answer 1

I personally love these sorts of questions, but I don't feel like the reward is proportional to the amount of effort required. Answering these sorts of questions is an art, and I feel like it deserves recognition in the same way that tag badges recognize expertise in subject area.

I hear you, but I do think: all of that is very subjective. I have seen plenty of low quality questions, were the questioner was simply not able or willing to accept that the real problem was the lack of quality of the question, or the fact that the question was (somehow) off topic. The bounty mainly resulted in more downvotes on the question, and various new users coming in with similar low quality answers hoping to make the bounty. Sure, that is not the majority, but it happens. No need to further honour the people hunting such bounties.

Also note that badges themselves are very subjective. Out of the many badges I collected over the years, only the legendary badge and some gold tag badges matter to me. I really do not care about the number of badges I hold, and I do understand that plenty of those can be attributed to sheer luck, especially the more obscure ones. Very rarely did I write an answer on a bad question thinking "oh, this will finally result in a lifeboat badge for me".

Of course, my anecdotes are subjective, too. The real point here is: it is subjective whether badges massively contribute to the quality of answers, thus I don't see why a closed discussion needs to be started again.

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_{Edit: as pointed out on another thread, some of the steward badges do matter for me, too. Maybe only badges that come with blood, sweat and tears for months do matter in retrospective.}